Public groupware and multi-user gaming are popular new Internet applications. However, their functionality and performance are limited and unappealing because the users find the current environment to have jerky interaction, infrequent screen updates, unacceptably slow speed, and lack of realism. These problems are primarily due to the lack of bandwidth over the Internet. Currently, when two or more users participate in the same multi-user session, each user has to be logged in at a central computer server. Therefore, the capacity of the central computer server becomes a constraint on the number of users that can participate simultaneously. The central server becomes a bottleneck and the architecture is not easily scalable to accommodate more users. There is also a lack of quality of service (QoS) support to improve the realism of the gaming session. As a result, although a community of online game players currently participate and play games over the Internet, their numbers have been limited. Since QoS is not guaranteed, the billing model for e-gaming service today is primitive and allows only free gaming or pay-in-advance.
Online gaming is important to broadband emerging service providers (broadband ESP) today because it makes an Internet site “sticky.” The metric by which Internet sites are valued today is not only the number of hits per day but also by the average amount of time a user spends at the site (stickiness). Online gaming provides content that not only increases the number of hits, but also makes a user linger at the site. Furthermore, the longer users stay at a site, the more targeted or untargeted advertisement can be shown to the users, which translates to more revenue opportunities. Online gaming also creates the feeling of an online community that allows the broadband ESP to bundle other broadband premium services like video, streaming advertisements, music, etc.